Minnesota shuts down

Republicans and Gov. Mark Dayton long ago reached an impasse over how to deal with a projected $5 billion deficit. Dayton offered a plan utilizing both cuts to services and an increased tax rate:

For the past six months, I have proposed that remaining gap be resolved by raising taxes on only the wealthiest 2% of all Minnesotans. Republicans have adamantly opposed it. Today, Representative Thissen, Senator Bakk, and I made two proposals which contained revenues to be raised by increasing taxes only on people who make more than $1 million per year. The Department of Revenue reports that there are only 7,700 of them, less than 0.3% of all Minnesota tax filers.

The Republicans rejected those two proposals, as they have every proposal that involves raising tax revenues from any source whatsoever. Instead, they would prefer to protect the richest handful of Minnesotans at the expense of everyone else, even at the expense of a state government shutdown. GOPers -- took control of both chambers of the Minnesota legislature for the first time in 38 years -- insisted on cuts only. As one Republican legislators told a member of Gov. Mark Dayton staff, “We’re friends with some of those guys.”

The Republican plan sounds like the same plan at both the national level, and the state level. Cuts for everything and no increase revenue. The Republicans want to cut everything, and privatize it for corporate profit which will mean lower wages, no benefits, and in the long run cost the taxpayers even more for the service they get, and cost the states even more money in the long run. Once big corporations have control of things they can pretty much do what they want and nobody will be able to stop them, unless voters get the Republicans out of office before it's to late.

A partial shutdown happened before in 2005 that lasted for eight days. Six years ago, the governor and Legislature had passed six of the 10 tax and spending bills that make up the budget, so relatively few agencies were affected, and the shutdown had a limited impact. This year they have completed action on only one of the 10 budget bills - a very small one for the Agriculture Department - so the effects of a shutdown would be far more sweeping.